Let’s Talk, Community!

I know Zwift toyed with this idea over a year ago, but ran into difficulties with implementation. And I get that–figuring out how to let Zwifters talk to each other without negatively impacting other Zwifters’ experience is no easy task.

While we wait for Zwift to figure out how to make it work seamlessly in-game, perhaps the community needs to embrace and push a standard to bring voice chat into the realm of the “normal Zwift experience.” That’s why I’m writing this post. Because the Zwift community already has a simple tool at their fingertips to engage Zwifters with voice interaction: Discord.

It’s a relatively simple app. It’s free. And it works great–all you need is a smart phone with some earbuds. But we aren’t using it enough! In fact, I’ve joined several group rides lately which include a Discord channel link in the event description… but no one on the ride is logged into the channel. Bummer.

I love using Discord, especially on longer rides. Wagner’s Wagon is a metric century ride led by Justin Wagner of TeamODZ every Thursday morning at 4:15AM Pacific time. This ride typically has several folks signed into Discord (including Justin), and it’s the voice chat that makes the miles fly by. Zwift is an entirely different experience when you can talk and joke with others. It’s like riding outside, but without the wind in your ears!

So this is my call to all Zwifters: let’s embrace Discord. Ride organizers: set up a channel and share the invite link. Riders: install Discord and use it on group rides. Let’s make this happen!

For races, having teammates in your ears changes everything in a good way. You can even use push-to-talk mode (or click to quickly mute your mic) if you’re worried about people hearing your heavy breathing.

We also have to think about the language, for us in Spain, not everyone can speak English, even another language that does not know English either, first I would add more languages to zwift, and then implement technical advances like this one.
Still it seems a great idea to be able to talk while pedaling a zwift race by teams can talk and manage strategies has to be amazing as it happens in real cycling with communication between director and cyclists

I ride a lot with the Pack rides, which use Discord and it makes a big difference to group rides. You get more of the leads instructions rather than waiting for messages, you hear the lead and sweep chatter so know how the group’s doing and then you get the chat of the regulars. Often get little titbits of knowledge on using Zwift, tricks, workarounds, gotchas, like sitting on a forum but easier than reading. Yet to pluck up the courage to speak, maybe that’s a bit of a blocker to people new to Discord, they hear all the old hands and don’t want to speak up (like getting into any new group). It feels like there should be a “how to” section on the Zwift page, with videos/articles/links (to sites like this, GP Lama, DC rainmaker etc). The info is there if you hunt on the web, but most newbies will start off at the Zwift pages. But at least Discord is optional, don’t make in game audio obligatory

When ever I lead Group rides I will have discord, spotify and the game sounds in my ears. Time fly by if you start chatting especially for the long base miles.
One thing that I still could not find is a general Zwift channel for when I just want to chat and all my friends are still sleeping.

Hi, I´m Hans from Germany. I´ve set up discord and joined the Zwift Rider Germany. In order to establish a 2nd channel with my friends, how does Zwift know that I´m using discord ? I know it is a dump question !

I totally agree that voice chat would be a great addition to a Zwift ride. I feel that Discord or Teamspeak is really only good for pre-arainged talking within a group (a small one) or between friends or a team. It does not take many simultainious talkers to make the experience just noise and unusable.
The best implementation I can think of is just like outside.. you can talk (push to talk), but only people within 10-15 feet or so can hear you.. and anyone can opt out of listening if they dont care. This keeps all conversations local and natural. This would probably need to be a Zwift implemented thing to be effective though.